Thursday, November 17, 2011

Towards A Cuddlier Capitalism, If Nobody Minds Too Much

Labour's attempt to regain its coveted status as the electable wing of the Conservative Party received a boost today as the Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband set out a five-point plan for doing as little as can be got away with. Claiming endorsement from both Bob Diamond and Rowan Williams (behold, the shark hath lain down with the sheepish), he called for finance and the real economy to re-think their relationship; for more empowerment of low-grade profiteers, as advised by Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring; and for vocational skills to be "encouraged" while unemployment is being enforced. He also made noises about "large concentrations of unaccountable private power that lead to higher prices, exploit consumers and lead to inefficiency", and put forth a charmingly Christian idea of helping the vulnerable: "Just as in our welfare state, we need to ensure a greater relationship between contribution and reward (sic), so too at the top." Presumably this means that in the Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband's welfare state, the Pauline prohibition on eating by non-workers will be applied with ever-increasing rigour.

The political wing of Ed Balls also deftly used the Government's redistribution policy as a pre-emptive excuse for his own: "the next Labour government is likely to inherit a deficit that still needs to be reduced", so that "resources will have to be focused significantly on paying down that deficit". Lest any doubts remain as to where those resources will come from, Britain's leading liberal newspaper notes that "much of his analysis is shared by the team around the business secretary, Vince Cable", whose relaxed attitude to the filthy rich is almost as famous as his point-scoring attitude to pre-election pledges. Doubtless Cable's moral example accounts for Randy Burnham's pledge to repeal Twizzler Lansley's anti-NHS bill, which has provoked the Conservatives into a rare show of dislike for the idea of turning the clock back to the 1940s. The likelihood of the pledge being fulfilled should Labour get into office, with or without the Liberal Democrats as an excuse, is almost certainly underwhelming.